As many as 30 per cent of young peo­ple see lit­tle value in democ­racy, ac­cord­ing to the Lowy In­sti­tute with me­dia com­men­ta­tors like Greg Sheri­dan sound­ing sim­i­lar alarm.

Maybe these kids just wanted a day off school, year end.

Their ed­u­ca­tion may have made them aware of Adani as an ac­cused pariah, re­spon­si­ble for en­vi­ron­men­tal degra­da­tion around the world in their oper­a­tions.

Maybe the prospect of cli­mate dis­as­ter later in their lives is a form of ter­ror they won’t be able to avoid and they don’t like be­ing flip­pantly dis­missed.

Stu­dents re­ceiv­ing as­sur­ances that cli­mate science is a form of sooth say­ing and a hoax, un­like other forms of science en­joy­ing high re­gard, might view this as a hol­low guar­an­tee by those with least to lose, old politi­cians.

The hon­ourable mem­ber’s com­ments might im­ply that de­vour­ing junk food is the well earned right of the dis­in­ter­ested, or those in de­nial. Whether or not cows emit­ted CO2 be­fore cli­mate change is un­likely to be a topic of stu­dent de­bate.

More likely and more dis­turb­ing is youth­ful de­bate that leads to a po­lit­i­cal par­a­digm shift that may shock all of us.

Drive with care near schools

(RE­CENTLY) it was the first day of the school hol­i­days for my daugh­ter and her col­lege (she is at Vic­tory Col­lege) and as I was driv­ing down the road past an­other school my heart skipped a beat .... it was 8am and I didn’t slow im­me­di­ately for the school near me.

I was al­ready in “hol­i­day mode”.

This hap­pened to me last year as well and it got me think­ing “am I the only one who does this?”

So I felt it best to put it out there and re­mind all of us that school us still on for some schools and to please be aware and be care­ful around our schools. Jada Burns, Gympie

Give kids back their fu­ture

THERE were a lot of bad things about the re­cent street de­mon­stra­tions by school chil­dren, and it shows just how far so­cial­ist ide­ol­ogy has in­fil­trated the school sys­tem. What wor­ries us the most though, is the use of scare tac­tics to frighten these kids into think­ing that the world, their world, has no fu­ture.

When we went through school, we had the cold war, and the threat of nu­clear con­flict. How­ever, our par­ents and teach­ers taught us to have am­bi­tion, to set our sights on our goals and to work hard for them. Guess what, it worked.

When our kids were at school, we had holes in the ozone layer, melt­ing po­lar caps and sea level rises thrown at us. The dif­fer­ence this time was that the pro­pa­ganda aimed at school chil­dren was all doom and gloom.

Now, things are worse as the alarmist lies be­come more stri­dent. The seas are still ris­ing, the ice is still melt­ing, the po­lar bears are be­com­ing ex­tinct, global warm­ing, man made cli­mate change, the list of lies goes on. Chil­dren who don’t have pos­i­tive in­put from their el­ders will strug­gle to see hope through the doom and gloom.

If peo­ple lose hope they are at risk of los­ing ev­ery­thing. The bright fu­ture that they all de­serve evap­o­rates. Too of­ten the at­ti­tude be­comes “why bother?”. John & Jenny Cameron, La­goon Pocket

A real Christ­mas story

SOME­TIMES we are touched by sto­ries that ac­tu­ally did hap­pen.

An­drew Bolt’s col­umn in (a re­cent) pa­per reads “some peo­ple are so des­per­ate to be right that ev­ery­thing they see con­firms their cra­zi­est the­o­ries”.

We should be grate­ful to Con­stan­tine for get­ting rid of Apollo, Thor, Zeus, Diana and Daphne and all the other gods and re­plac­ing them with one God.

Af­ter read­ing the let­ter from Jim Sweeney it is com­fort­ing to find that an­gels do ex­ist in hu­man form.

I think that story should have been front page news, that a com­plete stranger should of­fer to pay for a man’s bill of $70 or more.

If peo­ple con­sider them­selves to be Chris­tians, it is a real Christ­mas story for them to read. G O Johns, Cal­ico Creek

DIS­MIS­SIVE: Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son told the stu­dents protest­ing at cli­mate change in­ac­tion to get back in the class­room. A let­ter to­day says old politi­cians have the least to lose from cli­mate change.